


and miles to go

by abcooper



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 07:03:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14255535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abcooper/pseuds/abcooper
Summary: Given that she's a fugitive from the bureau's justice, Sara Lance is the LAST person Ava expects to find outside her door





	and miles to go

The knock on the door is the last thing she’s expecting, and Ava isn’t shy about  _ groaning  _ as she hoists herself off the couch, because this is literally her first evening off in six weeks. Between the Darhks  _ deliberately _ creating more anachronisms, and the so-called legends bumbling around accidentally doing the same, Ava needs 24 hours alone in her own space or she’s going to lose her mind and end up murdering Gary.

She pulls the belt of her robe tighter as she makes her way over to the door, and looks out through the peephole.  Standing in her dimly lit hallway is literally the  _ last  _ person she expects to see. Ava grabs her Bureau-issued stunner before opening the door.

“Miss Lance, what on  _ Earth _ are you doing at my apartment!?” she demands, and Sara doesn’t really answer, just stares at her, almost drinking her in, which is when Ava notices that something is  _ very very  _ wrong. 

“What's happened?” Sara has circles under her eyes, and her hair is a little stringy, like she’s gone just one too many days without washing it. “Is it the Darhks?” 

Sara moves forward, and before Ava has consciously even decided to let her in she’s moving aside, and then Sara is in her kitchen, looking around, and Ava resigns herself to whatever insanity is about to follow and shuts the door. 

“You know, I’ve never been inside your apartment before,” Sara says, looking around. It’s the first thing she’s said. She wanders forward, idly opens a cupboard and then closes it – if she’s casing the place, Ava’s not sure what good it’s going to do her to know what brand of cat food Ava buys. “It suits you.”

“ _ Obviously _ you’ve never been here – you’re wanted by the bureau,” Ava points out, a little outraged that Sara doesn’t even seem to be factoring that in. Shouldn’t it be at least a  _ minor  _ consideration in her behavior? “I should be arresting you right now. In fact, I haven’t completely made up my mind  _ not  _ to.” She waves the stunner threateningly for effect.

“Oh that’s right,” Sara says a little vaguely, “I’m technically a fugitive right now, aren’t I.” Ava stares at her, taken aback, and then suddenly, the pieces slot into place.

“You’re not my Sara Lance,” she says. “You’re from the future,” and Sara laughs, a genuine ringing sound, and when she looks at Ava there’s something soft and affectionate on her face and she seems a little less lost.

“I’m definitely still _your_ Sara, though,” she says. “Listen – I know you hate me in this time period, but could we have a drink or something? I’ve had one hell of a day.” 

Somehow they get settled on Ava’s couch with two glasses of whiskey. Sara is looking around interestedly, her eyes jumping from the photo of Ava’s parents next to the tv over to the weird art piece on the wall down to the spot on the carpet that’s worn away because Giles keeps using it as his scratching post. Seeing it all through Sara’s eyes, Ava feels exposed.

“Why are you even here?” she asks. “Surely you realize that the  _ last  _ thing we need right now is anymore anachronisms – time is stretched to the breaking point as it is.”

“Time is a little more malleable than we all think right now,” Sara answers her, taking a fortifying drink from her glass. Her eyebrows raise, impressed. “Nice. I didn’t think you liked this stuff before I started making you drink it.” 

“Sara,” Ava cuts her off. “Just tell me. Why are you here?” And then Sara picks her glass up, drains the whiskey from it in one long pull, before she looks Ava candidly in the eyes.

“You died tonight,” she says. “Well – yesterday really. I don’t know. The timeline wasn’t exactly cut and dry. We found your body a couple hours ago.” 

Oh. That’s not what Ava expected, but now she realizes that it should have been. She eyes the version of Sara in front of her, tries to gauge how much she’s aged, how many years Ava might have left – and then she has to stop herself.

“You shouldn’t tell me that,” she says, and feels the anger building as she adds, “you shouldn’t be here,” because if they really become friends, like Sara keeps implying, then why is Sara cruel enough to do this to her? Nobody should have to know about their own death. 

“The hell I shouldn’t,” Sara says. “Time owes me this much.” And then she’s leaning forward on the couch. She puts her glass down on the table, pulls Ava’s glass out of her limp hands and puts it down as well before twining their fingers together. She’s close, their knees brushing, intimate and intense. “Aves, listen to me – you’re already an anachronism, you’ll find out more about it soon enough. But you  _ already  _ don’t belong here – how much harm can it really do if you stay not-belonging a little longer? Quit your job, pack your bags, go be a – a cattle rancher, or a really mean middle school teacher, or whatever you’d want to do with your life if the bureau had never found you. You deserve  _ so much better  _ than how your life plays out, and I want it for you, you deserve to have everything,” there are tears gathering in her eyes, making them look even bigger in her pixie face, and her grasp on Ava’s hands has tightened until she’s basically  _ clenching _ Ava’s fingers. It kind of hurts.

It’s an information overload, and Ava just has to lean back, pulling her hands away from Sara to give herself a little physical and emotional distance. Some processing space.

“Why do you care so much?” she finally asks, because there is  _ nothing  _ else in Sara’s entire outburst that she dares to question. “We aren’t…. we aren’t even on good terms. I’m trying to arrest you. You made my entire week difficult, and not in like – an important way, even. We’re each other’s  _ headaches _ , Sara.”

Sara laughs, a wet choked-off kind of sound. “I shouldn’t have come back this far,” she says, and Ava has to choke down the desperate urge to ask  _ how far, when are you from _ . “There has to have been a better sweet spot – a moment when I’m someone you would  _ listen  _ to, but it isn’t too late yet.” Her gaze on Ava is sharp and desperate, but when her hand comes up to cup Ava’s cheek, the motion is soft – her thumb smooths down Ava’s cheek.

“I’m sorry I gave you a difficult week,” she murmurs, and then she’s surging forward, crashing her mouth into Ava’s with a kind of wild familiarity,  no hesitation because she’s obviously done this countless times before.

Ava presses back into the couch, her mouth falling open under the assault, and Sara follows her forward, bringing a leg around so that she’s straddling her,  _ Sara Lance is straddling her on her couch _ , and Ava is just  _ gone _ , because Sara knows exactly how to kiss her.

There’s wetness against her face and it takes her a moment to place it – Sara is still crying, her tears are falling against Ava’s cheeks – and then it disappears because Sara’s mouth moves along her jaw, teasing and hot.

And it’s not like Ava never  _ noticed  _ before that Sara’s – well. She has a swagger, is all. She walks like somebody who knows how to use their hips, and if Ava has ever considered, in the privacy of her own mind, whether Sara is all bluster or if she really follows through on all that unspoken promise, then she never thought she would have the chance to find out, never thought they’d get to a place where Sara would be in her lap knowing  _ exactly what Ava likes.  _

And Ava just found out that she’s going to die young, so she thinks she can be forgiven for the way that her arms slide around to hold Sara in place, for the way she lets her head fall back to give Sara better access to her neck. Sara is firm and muscled against her, and Ava digs in with her fingernails, let’s some of the urgency building within her show.

When Sara finally pulls back Ava almost  _ growls  _ at her, because dammit, if they’re going to do this they need to do it fast enough that Ava doesn’t have time to think better of it, but Sara doesn’t go far; she detangles herself and stands, but she pulls Ava up with her, and there’s some private joke hidden in the angle of her mouth when she says, “so, you got a room in this place?” 

It’s a messy tangle getting to Ava’s bedroom, and Ava considers it a victory when she gets Sara’s shirt off to reveal the truly  _ excellent  _ abs underneath – even more of one when Sara turns to walk to the bed and Ava gets to see the red scratches her fingernails have left down Sara’s back. 

“God, you’re every lesbian’s fantasy,” she mutters and Sara smirks at her, looks unfairly confident as she unzips her pants and sits spread-eagled on Ava’s bed.

“It’s not really a fantasy if you can have me,” she points out, and Ava tries on a little smirk of her own as she saunters forward and presses on Sara’s shoulders, pushing her the rest of the way down into the mattress.

It’s not a fair contest, because Sara  _ obviously  _ knows Ava’s body already and knows exactly what she likes, while this is brand new for Ava. Not everything about Sara is unfamiliar though. She knows these scars, knows where they came from, and she knows that the quirky “cigarettes behind the school gym” kind of badassery Sara likes to wear is just a front, knows that it covers up something much much darker. It’s not a surprise to find out that Sara likes a little bit of a fight in bed, and Ava  _ savors  _ the noise Sara makes at one point when Ava flips them over, catching Sara’s hands above her head and bringing her thigh up for Sara to rub against. It lights something up inside her, to see Sara so completely undone beneath her, and a moment later she goes for Sara’s jeans, pulling them down and tossing them unceremoniously to the floor so that she can  _ finally  _ get her mouth where she wants it.

They’re messy and loud and rough, and afterwards when it  _ should  _ feel awkward, Sara just sprawls an arm lazily across Ava’s waist and curls into her like they’ve done this a thousand times before. Ava’s hit with a sudden wave of heartbreak – what would it be like to come to this in the right order, with trust and affection built between them? Something about the softness in Sara’s face, the playful way she fought for and then ceded control in bed – Ava thinks that whatever romance they had, it must have been quieter and less explosive and  _ better  _ than whatever Ava had been picturing for them. It feels suspiciously like something permanent.

And then Ava is going to die.

Sara is watching her face, and Ava sees the contentment slowly fade from her eyes, the return of grief as she remembers where she is and why.

“Aves…” she murmurs, and reaches up to stroke Ava’s hair, pushing a lock of it behind her ear. “You think you owe the world so much, but it’s the other way around, alright? You’re  _ owed  _ some measure of happiness. You’ve never really gotten the chance to – to be  _ anything _ but this duty you’ve taken on. And there’s so much more to you than that.” 

“If I disappeared from your timeline, right now – if I took your advice, what would happen?” Ava asks, and she can’t believe she’s even considering this. She’s not going to walk away from her job – from her  _ duty, _ as Sara put it. But – “do I matter? In the fight against the Darhks, do I make a difference? Are there people alive who would be dead if I turned in my resignation tomorrow?”

“Someone else will do it,” Sara murmurs. “You’re irreplaceable Ava, but - not for this. Someone else could do what you do.” She leans in and kisses Ava again, and Ava tastes the lie.

“Stay here for the night,” she tells Sara, because she’s not ready to be alone with the weight of everything that has just happened. “We’ll figure the rest of it out in the morning.”

“That sounds good,” Sara says. She closes her eyes and presses in close, and Ava obeys the unspoken request and holds her, trying to act like this is something she’s done before. Trying to make it feel like the fantasy that Sara is obviously falling into, that she somehow has  _ her  _ Ava back for just one night. 

They lie there in the dark, clinging one another, and it’s a long time before either of them sleep.    
  


 

When Ava’s alarm goes off, she’s fairly certain that her eyes had only just drifted shut. There’s groaning next to her ear, and then Sara’s arm reaches across her, her breasts brushing Ava’s shoulder as she slams off the alarm.

“I know I deliberately chose your day off for this, why was that even set,” she mutters, and Ava laughs, a deep low sound as her chest fills with equal measures affection and grief. She hasn’t earned this moment yet - this comfort and domesticity - but she’s  _ going  _ to. All the love that’s in Sara’s past with her - it’s still in Ava’s future, unless she chooses to walk away from it.

She sits up, and Sara does too, looking at her with solemn eyes.

“I should go,” she says, and they dress in near silence, a sudden shyness in the room. Fully clothed, armor back in place, Sara puts a hand on her arm.

“Ava…. promise me,” she says. “You have to promise -  _ nothing _ that’s coming is worth losing your life.”   
  
Ava catches her eyes and holds them. “I promise,” she says, and then Sara is leaning forward, catching her lips one last time with a kind of desperation, and Ava tries to match it because whatever might be coming in Ava's future, for Sara, this is their last kiss.

And then Sara turns to the door and is gone. Ava makes her bed. She goes into the living room, and thoughtfully, she washes one of the whiskey glasses from her coffee table, putting it away like it was never out. She pours a measure into the remaining glass and leaves the bottle out next to it, and then she goes to her desk and pulls out her flash gun, and sits down with it on the couch.

There’s a future waiting for her, however short it may be. Ava is looking forward to uncovering it at her own pace.

**Author's Note:**

> this is falsealarm's fault, she told me to write something about Sara seeing Ava's apartment and it spiraled from there


End file.
